Rabshakeh

To me, his music is just texture, and, for all the electronics that are designed to move jazz forward, his music seems very tepid and slightly behind the times. More impressive players were doing more daring work in the same area a decade ago. To be honest though, I think his stylings just reflect what you need to do to get ahead as a younger jazz musician these days. I don't really blame Croker. But he's certainly not an artist who I am interested in seeing live.

Ike Quebec - It Might As Well Be Spring

Gordon Beck Quartet – Experiments With Pops

Cecil Taylor - Jumpin' Punkins Back when I was getting into jazz, I bought two of the 1961 CT vault releases. This one and Cell Walk. I wasn't that impressed by them and I went along with the then-prevailing critical consensus that they were lesser works that showed CT constrained by the labels. They also suffer from a slightly old fashioned production sound. On revisiting them for the first time in years, and having listened to a much broader range of jazz in the meantime, they are a bit of a revelation. Not just to hear Taylor comping on standards behind a band, but the way that they represent a path not taken (at least until the later 1970s), where traditional jazz and swing are layered onto free jazz in an exciting and quite visceral way. I can really hear the seeds of great groups like Pullen / Adams on these records. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Pullen took inspiration from them, as the connection seems much more apparent than to Taylor's later performance modes.

Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath – Live At Willisau Troxler's finest. I wish that his designs were more widely available, as they really are iconic and I'd love to have prints.

Frank Zappa - Hot Rats

Baikida Carroll – Orange Fish Tears

Dewey Redman - The Ear of the Behearer

Sorry. Getting old and repeating myself... These are some good records.

I always see her left shoulder as a sort of white mitten coming over the side of the guitar.

They sound to me a bit like the ICP Orchestra, but maybe less interesting. Any recommendations for albums welcome.

I somehow missed this bunch pretty much entirely. They seem extremely famous on parts of the Internet of Jazz. Any views on them or their solo albums?

Chet Baker and Lee Konitz – In Concert Quite a complex one, particularly given the state of Baker's other releases around this time. And a bit of a seeming outlier for India Navigation to release. I've never actually listened to this one. Is it the same as Extension Red White and Blue?

That is still a favourite of mine. Particularly the Webern.

Jon Jang and The Pan-Asian Arkestra – Tiananmen!

George Melly & The Feetwarmers – Nuts

ICP Orchestra – Oh, My Dog

That's great stuff!

Evan Parker, John Edwards and Chris Corsano - A Glancing Blow

The Ed Curran Quartet – Elysa Love this one.

Dexter Gordon – More Power!

That double CD is just so good. I was disappointed when I first bought the LP and realised half of it wasn't there. In many ways it is to be expected. The dividing line between the chosen take and the outtake is going to be small in jazz, and sometimes the outtakes are going to be as good if not better. With the Ornette Atlantic outtake records, I am always impressed at how many great songs he had lying around that just didn't make it onto the official albums. The most extreme case from my point of view is not Ornette, but the Frank Lowe album Black Beings, for which the outtake section reintroduced on CD is substantially superior to the original LP.

Same, but it isn’t the best of the outtakes records. The other two are, to my ears, on a level with the original records, whereas this one feels more like outtakes and b sides. My favourite outtakes record for Ornette is the outtakes from Science Fiction. I forget the name. I think it’s better than the original record.

Yes. Sorry. Those two comments were intended separately.

Ornette Coleman - To Whom Who Keeps a Record